“Where were you when you heard Kennedy was shot?” is the question that expressed my generation’s first defining communal catastrophe experience.
November 22, 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of that tragic, history-turning assassination.
Last month my wife and I visited Dallas, Texas for a professional conference, and discovered that we were within walking distance of the site of the shooting—the infamous Dealey Plaza.
On that fateful day, the President’s motorcade through the downtown made a sharp left onto Elm Street. At a speed of 11 mph, it started a gradual descent toward a railroad overpass. The front of the Texas School Book Depository was on the President’s right, and he waved to the crowd as he passed. Dealey Plaza, an open landscaped area at the western end of downtown Dallas, stretched out to the President’s left.
Seconds later several shots resounded in rapid succession. Lee Harvey Oswald, captured a few hours later inside the Texas Theater, was taken into custody under suspicion as the sniper who fired from the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building, and also for the murder of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit following the very public incident.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, Oswald was subjected to a series of lineups and questioning by the Dallas Homicide and Robbery Bureau. At 1:30 am the following morning, he was arraigned before the Justice of the Peace for the murder of President Kennedy. Questioning resumed several times later that day. As he was being brought to the Captain’s office for a final round of questioning the next day, Oswald was shot and killed by nightclub owner, and alleged associate of the Chicago Outfit mafia organization, Jack Ruby.
The Warren Commission, subsequently established by President Johnson, in its 888-page final report, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to assassinate the president; and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later.
In our visit to the historic site last month, we discovered that Dealey Plaza and the surrounding landscaping and buildings remain quite similar to how they appeared 60 years ago. The Book Depository is now the Dallas County Administration Building. Its sixth floor houses a museum, but access to the window of the one-time “sniper’s nest” is purposely blocked off by an exhibit.
On the street below, a total of three large yellow Xs mark the locations where the killer’s bullets ended their trajectories, a promising future of a popular President, and a more optimistic era for the nation itself.
For the record: I was in second grade in November 1963, and on the way home from school, our bus driver informed us all that the President had been shot. At home, I burst into the house to break the awful news, but my parents were already following the live reports on our black-and-white television. Two days later, my mom was watching when Ruby killed Oswald on live TV. Even as a mere 7-year-old, I was captivated by the horrific drama.